A Farmhouse Kitchen Garden - My Dream Come True!
Hey Guys! This post is long past due! And since I've hurt my back and I'm still lying around here doing nothing, I figure I should write a post about my garden and it will help me feel like I'm doing something productive!
Remember way back in January I wrote this post about my dreams for my green, green garden? Well my dreams have come true!! And it is AH-mazing!
Although I had to scale back from my original plan, it is still better than I could have hope for! Originally, I wanted to have my garden be placed in front of our house in our open field, where I could see it from the front porch and the ground is nice and flat, but that didn't work out. The ground is super rocky and there is no water anywhere nearby, so it wasn't the best location. Last year I started a flower/rock garden in our backyard after our yard was dug up for a new well. We decided near this would be a better location for my new garden. It is on a hill, but it does have a water spigot there and that is pretty important!
Here is the spot, way back in January, that we picked for my new garden. Right behind the water spigot. It gets tons of sun there, it's near the flower garden I already have, and it's near where the kids play. So win win!
It is still pretty rocky around here, but we planned on putting in raised beds so it's not a huge issue. The only hard part was digging for the fence posts. By some miracle my husband was able to get them all working around all the rocks we have.
Here is the most beautiful picture of all!! The start of my new garden! Never despise meager beginnings! I think construction is my love language!!!!!
Progress was being made! I wanted to have an arbor over the garden gate, so that vines and flowers could cover it, but I had a hard time deciding how I wanted the arbor to look. After tons of searching, I decided I wanted it to look something like this.
And here's how it turned out...
For the raised beds, we decided to make three rectangle beds around the perimeter of the garden and we thought about a square one in the middle, but we decided against that. I'm so glad we did! I really like having the extra space in the garden to move around in.
The two front beds are built at the same level, but the third one is lower because of the slant of the hill. It required a lot of math to make this work, but thankfully my husband is a math expert! Each bed is 3' wide, which is comfortable for planting and weeding, since I can only get to them from one side.
We made everything out of pressure treated lumber. In the old days, they say it was unsafe to use pressure treated because of the chemicals, but the way it's made now the boards aren't toxic for gardens. We would have liked to use something like cedar but that was out of our budget!
Now we were getting to the fun part! We dug out the sod all around the garden so I could have lots of planting beds to fill with flowers! Then we edged them with rocks that we picked up from our creek. It was starting to look so pretty!!
Our soil is so bad that we had to have lots of dirt brought in to fill all the beds. That was so much fun shoveling! We are all glad that part is over!
You can see the hill from this angle and how hard it was to get everything level.
My husband finished it off by trimming the lower section out with boards. I love the way it turned out!!
I was getting kinda worried about how late in the season I was going to plant the beds. But thankfully, I was able to start a lot of my veggies in flats to get them started before the garden was completed. I think we got it all done and planted around late May or early June. Everything has produced wonderfully!
Now, I'm so blessed every morning to walk up to this beautiful kitchen garden! My husband made this for me as my birthday/Mother's Day gift. He worked so hard to make this happen. I know that every sore shoulder, every smashed knuckle, and every minute he sacrificed to build this, he did because he loves me! It was literally like watching my dreams come true! It's one of the best gifts he has ever given me. I love it!
I can't wait to show you all more of this and how it all looks now! Everything has filled in so much, but that will have to wait until the next post! :)
